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Thanks for the "hint" regarding what seemed at first blush an inappropriate post.

r.c,

What type of site? PHP? Get a knowledgeable PHP coder ... who knows cacheing! Forums are a PITA as far as cacheing is concerned but that would be most helpful for relatively static pages. With your load, you want every shortcut you can get.

Definitely someone with Apache experience (on a VPS with your control panel).

Knowledge of mod_alias (Redirect) and mod_rewrite would almost be a necessity.

Great information, thanks! I guess I've just not been sure where to start... a php expert to optimize my scripts, a MySQL expert to optimize my DC, a Linux / Apache expert to optimize my server?

It is sounding like I need a total master of LAMP that can do all of the above.

Are there any tests, qualifications, experience, etc. that I should be looking for? I mean, since I don't know enough about LAMP, I wouldn't know if someone claiming to be an expert is any better or worse than the guy before him.

One thing that worries me is this: When I've worked in corporate environments I've seen DB Admins come and go. Every single time the new person says: "Wow, the last person was an idiot and totally messed things up! It's good you hired me, I can fix all this!"

Then the next person comes in and says the exact same thing... lather, rinse, repeat.

I guess I'm just worried about going down a rat-hole with someone claiming to be an expert, but either wasting my time, or worse, leaving things worse than when they started.